The book's focus is on the troubling questions of legitimacy that survive the resolution of a legal controversy. With constitutional issues, there are many such survivors, because the Constitution is more than a legal document; it is covenant as well as a contract.
To illustrate the point of legitimacy-beyond-legality, consider the American Nazi party, the Flat Earth Society, and Hustler magazine. All three are quite legal, but they lack legitimacy. We acquiesce in their presence as the price we pay for living in a free society; but we refuse to take them seriously as "legitimate" expressions of political action, scientific inquiry or literary endeavor.
Alexander Hamilton spoke the language of legitimacy when, as Publius, he noted in Federalist 27 the connection between sound Public Administration and widespread popular support
Legitimacy means more than a grudging acceptance of the inevitable.3 The word suggests at least confidence and respect and, at times, even warmth and affection.
[The administrative state is legitimate because it] is consistent with the Constitution, fulfills its design, and heals a longstanding major defect.
The creationist account is as factual, historical and perspicuous and is thus fundamental in the understanding of every fact and phenomenon in the created universe.
Administrators should use their discretionary power in order to maintain the constitutional balance of powers in support of instilling individual rights.
The word "regime" is not used in the journalistic sense of the "Carter regime," or the "Reagan regime," and so on. Rather it is simply intended as the best English equivalent of what Aristotle meant by a "polity." More specifically by the American "regime," I mean the fundamental political order established by the Constitution of 1789.
More directly related to the NPM is the impressive current literature criticizing it for its sometimes cavalier treatment of the rule of law, especially its free and easy slogans about eliminating red tape and letting managers manage
In France constitutions come and go, but administrative institutions remain.
A "value" in the life of a person as well as a nation suggests a pattern of attitudes or behavior that recurs with some frequency. An attitude or a passion or a principle must have a history—either personal or societal before it becomes a "value."
The Public Administration neither comprises nor heads any branch of government but is subordinate to all three of them. Like Congress, president, and courts, the Public Administration makes its distinctive contribution in a manner consistent with its peculiar place, which is one of subordination.
REGIME VALUES. An expression used frequently in public administration literature to denote the fundamental principles of a polity which, ordinarily, should guide administrative behavior. Although the term applies in principle to any polity, de facto it appears almost exclusively in literature focused on the United States. The expression entered the public administration literature in the first edition of this author’s Ethics for Bureaucrats: An Essay on Law and Values.
The purpose of this book is to legitimate the administrative state in terms of constitutional principle... Because public administrators at virtually all levels of government take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, this neglect deprives the profession of the opportunity to consider an important normative foundation for its activities.